Category Archives: InsideClimate News

What the NFL’s concussion scandal has in common with tobacco and ExxonMobil

by Octavia1778 Posted on March 24, 2016

What the NFL’s concussion scandal has in common with tobacco and ExxonMobil

By on 24 Mar 2016commentsShare

A New York Times investigation published Thursday confirms that the National Football League’s research on player concussions was seriously flawed, undercounting diagnoses by more than 10 percent in a series of studies from 1996 to 2001. At the same time, the league appeared to engage in a systematic campaign of obfuscation and denial. Even now that the the NFL’s top health official has admitted that football and degenerative brain disorders are “certainly” linked, some NFL fans and stakeholders remain unconvinced — publicly, at least. Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, for instance, said this week that “there’s no data that in any way creates a knowledge” — in other words, the jury’s still out.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because the NFL’s techniques are like those employed for decades by Big Tobacco to confuse consumers over the scientific research on smoking. In fact, the Times reports, the NFL hired tobacco lawyers, advisors, and lobbyists to help them do exactly that. In the 1990s, for instance, the league employed Dorothy Mitchell, an attorney who had also represented the Tobacco Institute in lawsuits over the health effects of cigarettes and secondhand smoke.

All this sounds remarkably like another industry that we now know borrowed tactics from Big Tobacco: oil and gas. In 1996, as the world considered acting to curtail fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, then-Exxon CEO Lee Raymond said, “Scientific evidence remains inconclusive as to whether human activities affect the global climate,” adding that “scientists agree there’s ample time to better understand climate systems and consider policy options, so there’s simply no reason to take drastic action now.”

The idea that “evolving science” means there’s no need to act is still prevalent among polluters and their political allies. “It is not unanimous among scientists that [climate change] is disproportionately manmade,” one-time presidential candidate Jeb Bush said last year. Last year, investigations by InsideClimate News, the Los Angeles Times, and Columbia University uncovered how Exxon-Mobil and the American Petroleum Institute were at the cutting edge of climate change research in the 1970s, until they reversed course to create a culture of denial we know too well today.

Big Oil, like the tobacco industry in the 1950s and perhaps now the NFL since the 1990s, knew of a major problem long before it admitted to it publicly. And like the health of smokers and football players, our health and the planet’s has suffered for it.

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What the NFL’s concussion scandal has in common with tobacco and ExxonMobil

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, InsideClimate News, ONA, Radius, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on What the NFL’s concussion scandal has in common with tobacco and ExxonMobil

FBI could investigate Exxon Mobil for climate change cover up

by WindyLlyyh Posted on March 3, 2016

FBI could investigate Exxon Mobil for climate change cover up

By on 3 Mar 2016commentsShare

Last year, an investigation by InsideClimate News found that scientists employed by Exxon Mobil warned the company about the connection between burning fossil fuels and a warming climate all the way back in 1977. Even more damning, reporters found that the company systematically ignored what it knew, even allegedly misleading the public about the science as it continued to pump carbon into the atmosphere unabated. Exxon, one of the most profitable companies in history, was handsomely rewarded for the subterfuge. But now, the oil giant may have to answer to for their actions. To the FBI.

InsideClimate News now reports that the U.S. Department of Justice has forwarded a request for a federal investigation to the FBI’s criminal division from two Democratic members of Congress. In a letter to Reps. Ted Lieu and Mark DeSaulnier, Joseph Campbell, the DOJ’s assistant director for criminal investigation, wrote:

As a courtesy, we have forwarded your correspondence to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The FBI is the investigative arm of the Department, upon which we rely to conduct the initial fact finding in federal cases. The FBI will determine whether an investigation is warranted.

This doesn’t mean we’ll see the well-heeled executives at Exxon in shackles any time soon. John Marti, a former federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota, called the Justice Department’s response a “punt,” according to InsideClimate News, and said that the DOJ “appears to be reluctant to engage in this matter.”

But should the FBI decide to look into Exxon, the future for the company could be bleak. “This is turning into a nightmare for Exxon,” wrote 350’s co-founder Jamie Henn in a statement, “No company wants to hear their name and ‘criminal’ in the same sentence. This FBI investigation must quickly lead back to a full Department of Justice inquiry and, ultimately, legal action. There’s too much public pressure and action by state Attorney General’s for this case to disappear into a bureaucratic blackhole. Exxon knew about climate change, they misled the public, and it’s time for them to held to criminal account.”

But will they be? In a nation where white-collar criminals are more likely to see Christmases bonuses than jail time, the idea that anyone from Exxon will be held accountable seems unlikely. Then again, at least one U.S. politician is intent on changing this culture: Sen. Elizabeth Warren recently released a report on criminal justice and the lack thereof among corporate criminals. “The failure to prosecute big, visible crimes has a corrosive effect on the fabric of democracy and our shared belief that we are all equal in the eyes of the law,” wrote Warren.

Clearly, as the justice system operates now — when nonviolent drug offenders get more jail time than major polluters — we aren’t all equal in the eyes of the law. Maybe a probe into Exxon will be the start.

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FBI could investigate Exxon Mobil for climate change cover up

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Here’s more evidence that cutting CO2 pollution can be good for the economy

by AlejandYdp Posted on July 14, 2015

Here’s more evidence that cutting CO2 pollution can be good for the economy

By on 14 Jul 2015commentsShare

The Northeast’s cap-and-trade program generated $1.3 billion in economic benefits for participating states over the last three years. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) also created an estimated 14,200 years’ worth of full-time employment between 2012 and 2014, and it cut residents’ electricity and heating bills by a total of $460 million. That’s according to a new analysis by a group that is creatively named Analysis Group, one of the largest economic consulting firms in the country.

In addition to spurring the economy in the participating states — Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont (Chris Christie pulled New Jersey out) — the system is succeeding at its primary goal: fighting climate change. CO2 emissions in participating states have fallen by about a third since 2009, when the carbon-trading system went into effect

So much for the argument that cutting greenhouse gas emissions hurts the economy.

Here’s more from the report:

We found lower costs to electric consumers throughout the region, decreases in revenues to the owners of certain power plants, and positive economic impacts across all states, totaling approximately $1.3 billion in economic value added (in 2015 dollars) as a result of RGGI’s second three years (2012-2014). This is on top of what we found for the first three years (2009-2011) of the program: $1.6 billion of economic value added (in 2011 dollars). Thus, considering results found in both our studies, the first six years of RGGI program implementation has continuously generated significant economic value for the RGGI states, while achieving the region’s collective objectives in terms of reducing emissions of CO2.

This research comes out just as debate is heating up over Obama’s Clean Power Plan, to be finalized this summer, which will limit CO2 emissions from power plants around the country. The Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity claims Obama’s plan will cost $41 billion per year, while the Union of Concerned Scientists contends that it will have a net economic benefit of up to $50 billion per year by 2020. Considering the new figures about RGGI’s impact, the UCS analysis looks to be more on the mark.

“We hope regulators across the country — along with policy-makers, utilities, and other stakeholders — are able to draw useful lessons from this report, as they evaluate Clean Power Plan options in their individual states,” report coauthor Andrea Okie said.

So, Analysis Group has the numbers in the Northeast to prove that state lawmakers don’t have to approach the Clean Power Plan with dread. Other groups have similar numbers for the West Coast, where other carbon-pricing schemes are in place. Will these reports be enough to begin shifting the debate? We can hope, but maybe don’t hold your breath.

Source:
Cap & Trade Shows Its Economic Muscle in the Northeast, $1.3B in 3 Years

, InsideClimate News.

Carbon-Trading Program Generates $1.3 Billion in U.S. Northeast

, Bloomberg.

Study: Northeast states benefit economically from carbon cap program

, The Associated Press.

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Here’s more evidence that cutting CO2 pollution can be good for the economy

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Mexico just shamed the rest of the world with its climate plan

by SyreetaLawyer Posted on March 30, 2015

Mexico just shamed the rest of the world with its climate plan

By on 30 Mar 2015commentsShare

Mexico is the first developing country to formally make its climate action pledge ahead of U.N. negotiations to be held in Paris later this year. And its plan is actually pretty ambitious, analysts say.

Mexico on Friday said it intends to have its greenhouse gas emissions peak by 2026 and then begin to decline. It will cut its “black carbon” emissions — particulate pollution generated by burning fuels like wood and diesel — in half by 2030. The net effect is that, by 2030, Mexico’s emissions will be 25 percent lower than if the country had continued without making any changes, and by 2050, emissions will be 50 percent below 2000 levels. The country is also working on reducing its “carbon intensity” — the amount of CO2 emitted per unit of GDP.

“That would make Mexico’s announcement a bit more ambitious than what is expected from China, but not as ambitious as what the U.S. will offer,” InsideClimate News’s John Cushman notes, referring to the November 2014 agreement between the Obama administration and China. Developing countries like China and Mexico are expected to allow their emissions to keep rising for a few years while their economies grow and their people rise out of poverty, whereas rich nations like the U.S., which have done most of the polluting in the past, are expected to start cutting emissions right away.

“While the devil is in the details, Mexico’s plan to peak its emissions by 2026 is particularly encouraging and should inspire others to follow a similar course,” said Jennifer Morgan of the World Resources Institute, a think tank that’s tracking progress toward a 2015 climate deal.

As part of the process of working toward a climate pact, 190 countries are each submitting their own plan for how they intend to voluntarily reduce emissions (in wonk speak, the plans are known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, or INDCs). In the years ahead, the U.N. will monitor each country’s progress toward realizing its plan, though the international body won’t have much power to penalize countries that don’t meet their goals. Developing countries and the European Union had pushed for a binding treaty that would punish nations that don’t curb emissions as agreed, but Obama would never be able to get that sort of treaty by the current U.S. Senate, so, in order to keep the U.S. in the game, the U.N. is now working toward a nonbinding agreement.

The U.S. is expected to submit its plan by the U.N.’s deadline, the end of the first quarter of 2015 (that’s tomorrow!), but other nations are not on track to do so. Still, not everyone is dragging their feet: The E.U., Switzerland, and Norway have outlined their INDCs, representing more than 10 percent of global emissions. And once the U.S. submits its plan, a third of world emissions will be accounted for.

Analysts tracking the process say many countries’ delays are probably at least partially strategic: If a country gets its commitment in at the last minute, the world has less of a chance to ask it to commit more. China and India, the world’s first and third biggest polluters, plan to submit their INDCs this summer.

Mexico’s contribution — and China’s anticipated contribution, based on last November’s joint announcement with America — set the reductions for the developing world on a fairly ambitious path. That’s encouraging, given that differences between rich and poor nations have scuttled past attempts at a climate deal. But some developing countries (India, notably) have been difficult to pin down on their likely commitments.

It will take commitments from all of the world’s major polluters, rich and poor alike, to put us on something even resembling a sustainable path — and with so many INDCs as yet undeclared, it’s impossible to determine if 2015 will be the year that the U.N. finally pulls off the climate deal its been attempting for decades. And even under a best-case scenario, diplomats have repeatedly warned that any deal likely won’t be enough to keep global warming under 2 degrees Celsius, the threshold scientists say we must meet to fend off the worst climate impacts.

Still, gotta start somewhere, and Mexico’s announcement is an encouraging step. Olé!

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Adapting to climate change will cost much more than we thought

by ChongJenkinson Posted on December 8, 2014

Adapting to climate change will cost much more than we thought

By on 8 Dec 2014commentsShare

Poor countries will need at least twice as much money as we thought in order to successfully adapt to climate change — and possibly five times as much by mid-century. That’s according to a new, more comprehensive assessment by the U.N. Environment Program. The findings shake things up quite a bit.

Some history, real quick: Back in 2009, at the Copenhagen climate summit, rich countries agreed that they would need to do something to help poor countries deal with what centuries of spewing carbon into the atmosphere had wrought. The rich countries were largely responsible for said spewing, while the poorer countries only recently started spewing themselves, if they ever started at all. The U.N. agreed upon a $100-billion-per-year price tag — worked out over the next few summits based on calculations by the World Bank — for helping poor countries to adapt while developing their economies along sustainable lines. Wealthy countries agreed to start contributing that much each year by 2020.

But according to the new UNEP report, rich countries only mobilized around $25 billion between 2012 and 2013 to help poor countries adapt. This year, Christiana Figueres, head of of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, also set a goal of getting $10 billion into the Green Climate Fund, a mechanism for funneling funding to climate change–related projects in the developing world, and that goal has just been met. But these sums are only a fraction of the amount that countries are supposed to pony up six years from now. And now, using the new report’s figures for what adaptation will cost (somewhere between $200 billion and $500 billion per year), that fraction just got even smaller. Eek.

And there’s further bad news: These $200-billion-to-$500-billion-a-year figures assume that negotiators are able to strike a deal to avoid 2 degrees Celsius of warming, the cutoff point scientists have suggested to keep the effects of global warming somewhat contained. Increasingly, it is looking like an emissions-reducing U.N. deal may come, but it will not be sufficient to stay below that 2-degree target. And if we don’t stay below it, climate change will strike harder, and the cost of helping poor countries adapt will be even higher. Put bluntly: “If you don’t cut emissions, we’re just going to have to ask for more money because the damage is going to be worse” — that’s Ronald Jumeau of the Seychelles, a small-island nation off the east coast of Africa, during this month’s U.N. negotiations, where he is a spokesperson for a coalition of small-island states.

The report notes that estimating the cost of adaptation is a lot harder than estimating the cost of greening the international economy. Even so, the numbers in this report are not likely to be an overestimation — if anything, they’re an underestimation. As climate change continues, more and more frequently, to rear its ugly head, researchers will realize that there are components of adaptation that have not yet been studied and priced, but that nonetheless will have to be paid for.

Where will that money come from? That’s a question that negotiators aren’t much closer to answering now than they were back when they agreed to raise $100 billion a year. But it’s on the agenda for the climate conference currently underway in Lima, Peru, where “high-level” talks begin this week.

Source:
UN: climate change costs to poor underestimated

, The Associated Press.

Cost of Adapting to Climate Change Much Higher Than Thought

, InsideClimate News.

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Dot Earth Blog: A New Study Clarifies Treatment Needs for Water from Fracked Gas and Oil Wells

by Myrna Posted on September 8, 2014

A new analysis of water from fracked wells around the country clarifies treatment needs. View the original here –  Dot Earth Blog: A New Study Clarifies Treatment Needs for Water from Fracked Gas and Oil Wells ; ; ;

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Dot Earth Blog: A New Study Clarifies Treatment Needs for Water from Fracked Gas and Oil Wells

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A New Study Clarifies Treatment Needs for Water from Fracked Gas and Oil Wells

by Myrna Posted on September 8, 2014

A new analysis of water from fracked wells around the country clarifies treatment needs. Source article: A New Study Clarifies Treatment Needs for Water from Fracked Gas and Oil Wells ; ; ;

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A New Study Clarifies Treatment Needs for Water from Fracked Gas and Oil Wells

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Contractor That Evaluated Greenhouse Gas Emissions for Keystone XL Report Had Ties to TransCanada

by Andrew Karolitz Posted on March 14, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This story originally appeared in Huffington Post and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The contractor that evaluated greenhouse gas emissions for the State Department’s Keystone XL report is the latest company to come under fire for its ties to TransCanada, the prospective builder of the controversial pipeline.

A conflict-of-interest statement from the consulting firm ICF International, submitted to the State Department in 2012, reveals that the company had done other work for TransCanada.

ICF International analyzed greenhouse gas emissions from tar sands oil, the kind that would flow through the pipeline, for the State Department’s supplemental draft environmental impact statement, released in March 2013. Its website states that the firm was hired to compare life-cycle emissions associated with oil derived from Canada’s tar sands to those associated with oil from conventional crude.

The final environmental impact statement (FEIS), released in January 2014, also includes ICF International on its list of preparers, with ICF staffers working on the greenhouse gas and market analysis portions of the report.

The FEIS concludes that the projected 830,000 barrels of oil that would flow through the pipeline every day would add between 147 million and 168 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere annually. But it also says that the pipeline would be “unlikely to significantly impact the rate of extraction in the oil sands, or the continued demand for heavy crude oil at refineries in the United States.” In other words, the report concludes, those greenhouse gas emissions from tar sands oil would probably be produced with or without Keystone.

The State Department recently posted ICF’s conflict-of-interest forms on its website. Before it was approved to work on the supplemental draft EIS and the final EIS, the company had to make these disclosures.

ICF International submitted a letter dated Aug. 26, 2012, which said that the firm and its Canadian affiliate, ICF Consulting Canada Inc., had done work for TransCanada before. However, the letter said, “we have thoroughly considered the matter and are confident that this work does not represent an Organizational COI conflict of interest based on several important considerations detailed in the attached materials.”

Those earlier services included work as a subcontractor on the first environmental impact statement for Keystone XL released in August 2011, which was produced by the consulting firm Cardno ENTRIX. “This project represents by far the largest body of ICF work paid for by TransCanada,” ICF said in its letter. But it said the work did not constitute a conflict of interest because “the work was actually overseen and directed by the State Department.”

That kind of arrangement is, in fact, normal: A company seeking the State Department’s approval for a project with potential environmental impacts will fund contractors’ work on the EIS–instead of shifting the cost to the American taxpayer–while the department oversees the actual evaluation.

But that was not the ICF’s only tie to TransCanada. Its 2012 letter said that its Canadian affiliate had been retained by TransCanada Pipelines Limited since 2008–and was still doing work at the time of the disclosure–”to provide advisory services related to air emissions issues associated with operations in Canada and the US” Those services included “climate policy analysis and regulatory support.” ICF said that it was paid “less than $300,000” for that work between 2010 and August 2012, which accounted for “less than 0.1 percent” of its total revenues over that period. The company said that it believed the “nature and scale of this work do not represent an Organizational Conflict of Interest,” but that it would take “additional mitigation measures to ensure that no such conflict arises,” a description of which the company said appeared in its conflict-of-interest plans-and-procedures document. The State Department published the plans-and-procedures document, too, but it is heavily redacted and the mitigation steps are not visible.

ICF has also provided services to other oil interests that support the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The firm did consulting work in 2008 for the American Petroleum Institute, evaluating the potential effects on the oil and gas industry from greenhouse gases cap-and-trade legislation then under consideration in Congress. That study concluded that the bill would increase the cost of drilling and operating natural gas wells and would likely lead to a decrease in drilling.

Last year, InsideClimate News noted ICF’s work for pipeline and oil companies generally. The company does not list its clients online.

ICF’s disclosures feed into the allegations that environmental organizations have been making for months about contractors for the Keystone FEIS having conflicts of interest that should have precluded them from working on the report. The State Department’s Office of Inspector General released a report last month concluding that the department had adequately followed its conflict-of-interest procedures in selecting the main FEIS contractor, Environmental Resources Management. Pipeline supporters have said that the inspector general’s report should remove any remaining barriers to approving Keystone.

But the report also noted that the process for selecting contractors requires “very little” documentation and that while those “minimal requirements” had been met, the process “can be improved.” The inspector general had made similar comments about the process in February 2012, in response to earlier conflict-of-interest complaints regarding Cardno ENTRIX.

Now the ICF disclosure is renewing environmentalists’ criticism of the FEIS report. Ross Hammond, a senior climate and energy campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said the disclosure is further evidence that the FEIS was “hopelessly compromised” and that the conflict-of-interest screening procedures “are a complete and total joke.”

“If there’s one thing that the oil industry and environmentalists agree on, it’s that Keystone XL is critical to developing the Canadian tar sands,” said Hammond. “By hiring a known TransCanada contractor to reach the opposite conclusion, State Department bureaucrats have proven that they simply cannot be trusted to oversee an objective and unbiased review of this controversial pipeline.”

Steve Anderson, ICF International’s senior director of public affairs, referred questions to the State Department.

“These documents were submitted to the State Department pursuant to our rigorous guidelines on selection of third party contractors,” said a State Department spokesperson in an email to The Huffington Post. “Every document submitted is thoroughly reviewed by the Department. The Office of Inspector General found that our processes not only avoided conflicts of interest, but were more rigorous than required.”

Environmental groups say that how much the pipeline will contribute to greenhouse gas emissions is a fundamental question for the Obama administration to consider as it decides whether to approve Keystone XL. While the FEIS concluded that the pipeline’s impact would be minimal, another recent study, from the group Carbon Tracker, argues that the State Department report fails to adequately consider the degree to which the pipeline would facilitate more rapid development of the tar sands because shipping the oil by pipeline is cheaper than shipping by rail. The Carbon Tracker study found that “KXL-enabled production” of tar sands oil would create as much as 5.3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent by 2050.

President Barack Obama said in his climate change speech last June that Keystone should be approved only if it “does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.” The emissions question, he said, will be “absolutely critical to determining whether this project will go forward.”

“At this point, it’s no surprise to find yet other questionable consultant on the State Department’s Keystone XL environmental study. And it’s not surprising that an oil pipeline consultant that’s currently working for TransCanada would say there’s no conflict of interest,” said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. “But what’s really important to keep in mind is that State’s study, compromised as it was, found that Keystone XL would create a significant amount of climate pollution–the equivalent of nearly 6 million automobiles–and that the final decision rests with President Obama.”

Link:

Contractor That Evaluated Greenhouse Gas Emissions for Keystone XL Report Had Ties to TransCanada

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Will the U.S. lift its 38-year ban on crude oil exports?

by Elva Diller Posted on January 7, 2014

Will the U.S. lift its 38-year ban on crude oil exports?

By

Shutterstock

The U.S. could start sharing the crude spoils of its environment-ravaging drilling boom with other nations.

The country banned crude exports after the oil shocks of the 1970s. But oil producers and oil-loving politicians alike are starting to push for that export ban to be lifted. Oil companies last year began preparing a legal challenge to the ban, which may argue that it violates international law. And last month, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz suggested that it may be time to consider lifting the ban. “Those restrictions on exports were born, as was the Department of Energy and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, on oil disruptions,” he said at an energy forum.

FuelFix explains the growing disquiet over the export ban:

As a new year dawns in the nation’s capital, the Obama administration and Congress find themselves grappling with a scenario that was unthinkable just a short time ago: What to do with the domestic oil flowing out of West Texas, North Dakota and other states?

The climb in domestic crude production has created a dilemma for both lawmakers and the White House, who are facing new pressure from oil companies to relax the nation’s 38-year-old ban on exports of the unprocessed product. …

[T]here is a growing glut of light, sweet crude that is unearthed in the U.S., and barred from export. Many U.S. refineries, particularly along the Gulf Coast, were designed to process heavier supplies from Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Canada, and while some have adapted to handle more of the light, sweet domestic product, bigger changes are unlikely soon.

And here is some nice context from InsideClimate News:

Emboldened by the recent boom in U.S. crude production, oil company executives and others closed the year by launching a highly public push for the right to freely export U.S. crude oil. The move is a 180-degree change from 40 years of telling Americans that the country needs all the oil it can get to achieve energy independence and to protect consumers and the economy from oil and gasoline price shocks.

It’s a particularly dicey appeal to make right now because the call for oil exports — and the industry’s rationale for it — run counter to the arguments that oil companies and politicians are still using to justify a host of industry-backed initiatives, including the controversial Keystone XL pipeline project that would import oil from Canada.

What’s more, for the American public, every discussion about oil policy ultimately boils down to one question: What would it do to gasoline prices? On that front, unrestricted oil exports would be a difficult sell.

Lifting the ban would encourage still more drilling, which would be bad news for the environment in the U.S. and for the global climate.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) will be fighting to keep the export ban in place. “Clearly Big Oil’s push for increased domestic drilling has nothing to do with increasing our nation’s security, or else the industry wouldn’t be seeking to export U.S. crude oil abroad,” he said.


Source
Oil glut stirs debate over US crude exports, FuelFix
2014: Export of American Oil Is Contentious Industry Goal After 4-Decade Federal Ban, InsideClimate News

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Will the U.S. lift its 38-year ban on crude oil exports?

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John Podesta, climate hawk and Keystone opponent, joins Obama team

by Jay Walker Posted on December 11, 2013

John Podesta, climate hawk and Keystone opponent, joins Obama team

By

Center for American Progress

This post has been updated at the bottom with news that Podesta will recuse himself from the Keystone XL decision.

President Obama is getting a new high-level adviser who cares a lot about climate change and doesn’t care much at all for the Keystone XL pipeline.

John Podesta is no stranger to the White House; he served as chief of staff to President Clinton. And he’s no stranger to the Obama team; he led the president’s transition into office after the 2008 election. Since then, he’s served as an “outside adviser,” The New York Times reports, and “has occasionally criticized the administration, if gently, from his perch as the founder and former president of the Center for American Progress, a center-left public policy research group that has provided personnel and policy ideas to the administration.”

For the coming year, he’ll be advising from the inside. He will help out on health care and “will focus in particular on climate change issues, a personal priority of Mr. Podesta’s,” according to the Times. Podesta is expected to encourage Obama to take action through his executive authority, as Congress is unwilling and unable to pass legislation on climate change or much else. “Podesta has been urging Obama for three years to use the full extent of his authority as president to go around Congress,” Politico reports.

Podesta is also an outspoken opponent of Keystone, and his move to the White House is making some Keystone boosters nervous, National Journal reports.

InsideClimate News has more:

His arrival comes just as the decision on TransCanada’s proposal to build a controversial pipeline to deliver tar sands crude from Alberta across the midsection of the United States approaches a critical turning point: the completion of a final environmental impact statement by the State Department. That will be followed by a crucial 90-day period in which Obama must decide whether the pipeline is in the U.S. national interest. …

Podesta has allied himself closely with some of [the environmentalists opposing the pipeline], including the wealthy investor Tom Steyer, who has been mobilizing opposition to the project. They appeared together at CAP’s conference to celebrate its 10th anniversary this fall.

Just last week, CAP co-sponsored a daylong conference with Steyer’s team in Georgetown to argue that the pipeline could not pass the litmus test Obama set back in June — that the Keystone could only be approved if it didn’t significantly exacerbate greenhouse gas emissions. …

[A]s the various interests in the Keystone decision make their final arguments at the White House, Podesta could not be better positioned as a particularly close adviser to voice his own views — and to debunk the arguments of those who favor the tar sands pipeline.

Will Podesta make the difference on Keystone? Don’t count on it. There are already plenty of people in the administration on both sides of the issue. Ultimately, the call is Obama’s alone.

But Podesta could make the difference on UFO issues …

UPDATE, from The New Yorker:

A White House aide emailed late Tuesday that Podesta would recuse himself from working on the Keystone Pipeline decision.

“In discussions with Denis,” the aide said, speaking of White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, “John suggested that he not work on the Keystone Pipeline issue, in review at the State Department, given that the review is far along in the process and John’s views on this are well known. Denis agreed that was the best course of action.” Podesta’s climate change portfolio will therefore be limited largely to overseeing implementation of E.P.A. regulations, which are already moving along, and not the far more controversial and politically sensitive decision about the pipeline.

Still, Podesta is on record strongly opposing the pipeline. If Obama approves the project, he will have to do so knowing he is contradicting the assessment of his new climate-change adviser.

Full disclosure: Grist periodically reprints posts from ClimateProgress, a Center for American Progress blog.

Lisa Hymas is senior editor at Grist. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

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John Podesta, climate hawk and Keystone opponent, joins Obama team

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